Unless you’ve been living under an impressive noise-cancelling rock over the last few days, you’ll no doubt be aware that Apple has become the first manufacturer to incorporate Intel’s new Light Peak technology, under the assumed name ‘Thunderbolt’ into its latest MacBook Pros laptops.

I won’t go into too much detail over exactly what the Thunderbolt (aka Light Peak) technology is (I’ll assume at least some knowledge for the purposes of this article), but suffice it to say that LaCie has followed suit and become one of the first third party to release a Thunderbolt capable peripheral.

The external hard drive will obviously be capable of previously improbable transfer speeds using the Thunderbolt connectivity built in to the latest MacBooks, and will become part of the daisy chain linking all of your Thunderbolt peripherals together, should you accumulate them.
The drive itself is a typical LaCie design, with a giant blue LED sporting the front of the white corrugated casing. It looks pretty standard, but not at all bad. And the small stature of the device, in keeping with the name, should provide those on the go with a pretty decent storage device capable of transfer speeds in excess of anything they’ve seen before.

It’s exciting times, especially for media buffs who have previously had to endure paltry transfer speeds. On top of that, the Little Big Disk will operate as the perfect Time Machine for your new MacBook Pro, and eventually a decent backup device for any computers incorporating the Thunderbolt technology, as LaCie claims it can do an entire system backup in just minutes. To be honest, it’s pretty astonishing, and this is just the beginning. I’m genuinely excited for Thunderbolt.

The LaCie Little Big Disk can simultaneously stream multiple high definition video streams, which means storage and connectivity is finally catching up with the rest of the world, who dreamt of such possibilities quite a while ago now.

“Thunderbolt technology is a breakthrough in I/O technology and represents the future of mobile computing. Soon you will be able to carry workstation-class power and functionality in compact devices,” said Philippe Spruch, Chairman and General Manager, LaCie. “LaCie is excited to be one of the first to deliver Thunderbolt technology with the LaCie Little Big Disk.”

“Intel believes Thunderbolt technology in combination with LaCie’s unique portfolio of storage products and displays will drive new levels of performance and simplicity for consumers,” said Jason Ziller, Director, Thunderbolt Planning and Marketing, Intel Corporation.

With it only being announced in the last couple of days, there is no word on pricing yet, and similarly there is no news from LaCie on the storage capacities being offered. Two vital ingredients in choosing your storage devices. Having said that, with it being touted as the future of storage, and bragging about it’s ability to stream HD video, we’re expecting terabytes. Probably maxing out at two, unless the market picks up in the next 6 months before the expected release of summer 2011.

It’s not too long to wait, but seeing as the MacBook Pro’s are out already, it seems like anyone jumping aboard early will have to wait a little while before they pick up anything that can actually make use of the incredible 10GBPS transfer speeds being touted.

So, if your thinking of upgrading your current laptop to the new MacBook Pro, you may want to consider holding off until Summer, although you probably won’t want to. Hopefully we’ll see some peripherals hitting shelves before summer, but even if we don’t, Thunderbolt is here, and it won’t be for much longer that we have to wait hours for the deceitful progress bar to finally decide it wants to proceed.